ok into her head
to "scare" and "buck," and when I touched her with my foot she leaped
over a heap of timber, and the girth gave way, and the onlookers tell
me that while she jumped I fell over her tail from a good height upon
the hard gravel, receiving a parting kick on my knee. They could
hardly believe that no bones were broken. The flesh of my left arm
looks crushed into a jelly, but cold-water dressings will soon bring it
right; and a cut on my back bled profusely; and the bleeding, with many
bruises and the general shake, have made me feel weak, but
circumstances do not admit of "making a fuss," and I really think that
the rents in my riding dress will prove the most important part of the
accident.

The surroundings here are pleasing. The log cabin, on the top of which
a room with a steep, ornamental Swiss roof has been built, is in a
valley close to a clear, rushing river, which emerges a little higher
up from an inaccessible chasm of great sublimity. One side of the
valley is formed by cliffs and terraces of porphyry as red as the
reddest new brick, and at sunset blazing into vermilion. Through
rifts in the nearer ranges there are glimpses of pine-clothed peaks,
which, towards twilight, pass through every shade of purple and
violet. The sky and the earth combine to form a Wonderland every
evening--such rich, velvety coloring in crimson and violet; such an
orange, green, and vermilion sky; such scarlet and emerald clouds;
such an extraordinary dryness and purity of atmosphere, and then the
glorious afterglow which seems to blend earth and heaven! For color,
the Rocky Mountains beat all I have seen. The air has been cold, but
the sun bright and hot during the last few days.

The story of my host is a story of misfortune. It indicates who should
NOT come to Colorado.[11] He and his wife are under thirty-five. The
son of a London physician in large practice, with a liberal education
in the largest sense of the word, unusual culture and accomplishments,
and the partner of a physician in good practice in the second city in
England, he showed symptoms which threatened pulmonary disease. In an
evil hour he heard of Colorado with its "unrivalled climate, boundless
resources," etc., and, fascinated not only by these material
advantages, but by the notion of being able to found or reform society
on advanced social theories of his own, he became an emigrant. Mrs.
Hughes is one of the most charming, a